Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 109

Not dramatically. Not with intent. Just the sudden inappropriate application of pressure from a hand that had made a decision without informing the rest of me, the crack of it, the bartender appearing with a cloth, taking it from my hands, muttering apologies about defective glass.

Durian had been standing three feet away.

He’d looked at my hand. Looked at the pieces of glass. Looked at Lucian across the room, still recovering from the cheek-kiss with the expression of someone filing an interaction away, who had not noticed this particular incident because the woman was keeping him company and me out of his sight. He looked back at me and said nothing.

For two weeks, he said nothing, that I had almost given up, thinking maybe he did not know and I was being paranoid for no reason. And then he’d appeared at my office door one afternoon, closed it behind him, sat down in the chair across from my desk, and said: “How long?”

I’d said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He’d said: “You broke a glass because someone kissed his cheek. How long?”

I’d looked at him for a long moment, calculating the odds of successful denial, and concluded they were poor.

“Eighteen months,” I’d said.

He’d exhaled. “Does he know?”

“No.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“No.”

He’d nodded slowly, with the expression of someone processing information that required reorientation. Then: “Are you going to do anything about it?”

“No.”

“Why?”

He arrived at Meridian at half past ten, which was forty minutes after I’d gotten there, which meant I’d had a forty-minute head start on the drinking, which was more of a head start than I’d intended when I’d sat down

He stood in the doorway for a moment, scanning the bar with the efficiency of someone who assessed spaces quickly, found me in the corner where I always sat, and crossed to the stool beside mine with the unhurried certainty of a man who’d decided the evening was going to require patience and had allocated it in advance.

He looked at the glass in front of me. Looked at the two empty glasses that the bartender hadn’t yet cleared. Looked at me.

“You started without me,” he said.

“I told you I was already here.”

“I assumed that meant you’d ordered and were waiting.” He settled onto the stool, nodded to the bartender, held up two fingers. “I didn’t assume it meant you’d had a head start that required two empty glasses.”

“Three. He took one already.”